Full Pundit: Are cheaper elections better elections?

Full Pundit: Are cheaper elections better elections?

WEEKEND ROUNDUP

Free spending, free speechDifferent problems lead to very different solutions on campaign financing.

Gerry Nicholls, writing for TheGlobe and Mail, notes a basic consensus in Ottawa that restricting Canadians’ abilities to donate to political parties and advertise during election campaigns is inherently virtuous, and sets us nobly apart from the Americans. He is somewhat surprised the Conservatives are on board, considering that in a former life Stephen Harper “actually challenged the election gag law in the courts, arguing it violated the Charter guaranteed right to free expression” — but then again, Nicholls says all the restrictions they have enacted benefit them politically, at the expense of the opposition. Which is why he is surprised the Liberals and New Democrats are so enthusiastic about those restrictions. While they scrimp and struggle to knock Harper off his throne, “the Conservative government is spending $8-million on ads to sell Canadians on its plan to cut old age benefits,” he writes. It’s not a fair fight.

We’re pro-freedom in principle on these matters as well, but the United States’ jaw-dropping $6-billion election is certainly a cautionary example, as Postmedia’s Andrew Coyne says. And he highlights the most frustrating thing about it: “At a time when communicating with the public has never been cheaper, elections have never cost more.” That premium comes not from broadcasting information, in Coyne’s view, but from practising the various complicated dark arts of misinformation — which all parties feel they must do, so as not to fall behind in the arms race. Coyne proposes a new system whereby each Canadian would have a single total campaign donation limit for political parties and third-party organizations. The goal, he says, is to “starve the beast” and produce a better politics.

Interestingly, as the Montreal Gazette‘s Don Macphersonreports, some in Quebec are suggesting that limiting political donations would have a negative effect — namely, an increased market in brown envelopes — “because the cost of waging election campaigns [would remain] unaffected.” (Awesomely, the Parti Québécois tabled legislation to this effect one day after launching a “40-day fundraising blitz,” so as to wring as much out of the current system as it can!) Lowering the campaign spending limit itself might be a better option. But Macpherson seems fairly skeptical about all the corruption fixes currently before the National Assembly, on account of their haste and prematurity, and what he sees as Quebecers’ unhealthy belief in the magical powers of legislation.

Tom Flanagan, writing in the Globe, argues that the controversy over drugstore magnate Daryl Katz’s $430,000 cheque to Alberta’s Progressive Conservatives should should “prompt a review of [the province’s] embarrassing electoral finance laws,” which he says are uniquely lax — and laxly enforced — among Canadian jurisdictions and “are the fiscal foundation of the one-party system that has existed since 1971.” If that does not occur, he predicts “Katz’s contribution will figure prominently in the next election campaign.”

On remembranceThe Edmonton Journal‘s Paula Simons speaks to Steven Pinker on the declining violence in the world — he suggests the First World War was a turning point, the death of the romantic ideal of war-fighting — and why so many of us are so loath to accept this good news.

The National Post‘s editorialists note the Conservative government’s curious habit of penny-pinching and downright bastardly behaviour when it comes to retired soldiers and their pensions, disability benefits and even funerals. Even setting aside right and wrong — this is politics, after all — you’d think their core supporters would be rather annoyed by these stories. This being Canada’s first peacetime Remembrance Day for more than a decade, the Post says it’s imperative that veterans’ post-service needs not fall out of the spotlight. The Toronto Star‘s editorialists agree: “To say our veterans deserve better is to utter the D-Day of understatements,” they say. We’d say our veterans deserved better than that metaphor!

Peacetime or not, the Post‘s Brian Hutchinson observes, “Afghanistan as a whole remains a quagmire. Islamists still concede nothing to the national government and its powerful Western allies. Serious peace talks are just rumours, nothing more. Money raised from the sale of illicit drugs continues to leave Kandahar and other provinces, usually ending up in offshore banks. Money and equipment used to sustain the insurgency still arrives from neighbouring countries such as Iran and Pakistan.” It’s not all bad news. But it sure ain’t V-E Day, either.

U.S. election post-post-mortemDavid Frum, writing in the Post, has a disturbingly basic six-point plan for Republican renewal and possible victory. Tips include to “insult fewer people”; “show up, shake hands, learn the names”; and, “instead of lecturing people about one’s principles, hear them describe their concerns, their values, their aspirations.”

Any “thoroughly credible [Republican] challenger … would have thrown Obama out of the White House like a dead mouse,” Conrad Blackwrites in the Post, meaning that Mitt Romney was not such a candidate. “Historically, when America has needed leadership, its greatest leaders have come forward,” he says — and the fact that didn’t happen this time around, he says, “was the single most worrisome aspect of this election.”

Postmedia’s Michael Den Tandt, meanwhile, argues that the Romney/Ryan fall-apart gives Stephen Harper some leverage in the behind-the-scenes battle over whether the party should re-embrace conservatism. “See what happens if we’re too extreme?” he can say. With two credible opponents in Tom Mulcair and (presumably, soon) Justin Trudeau battling fiercely for the centre, now is no time for Harper to abandon it, in Den Tandt’s view — especially since “the Conservatives by 2015 will be labouring under the accumulated grievances of nine years in power.” He also foresees a “personal charm offensive” in the near future, “involving a grand piano, a hockey book, a blue sweater, or some combination of the three.”

Duly notedWe welcome the Globe‘s Margaret Wente back to the Full Pundit reading list after some of our own disciplinary action, only to find a dreary-as-all-hell treatise on sexual economics that is as insulting to young people as it is to men (and nearly as insulting to women), and that scandalously misidentifies Surf City as a Beach Boys song right in the lede. (Awesomely, the online article links to a YouTube clip of Jan and Dean performing it.) We think we might just go back to ignoring her.

In the wake of a Grammy Awards ceremony that disappointed many, from Kanye West to the masses on Twitter lamenting the state of pop music, a historical perspective is key. Few are better poised to offer one than Andy Kim.